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The starting point of this thesis in feminist political philosophy is first and foremost a preoccupying empirical record. In spite of all the progress made in the past fifty years in matters of gender equality, the division of labor between men and women, at home as well as in the workplace, still persists in our democratic societies. In line with a decidedly feminist perspective, combining the contemporary reflections on the politics of care and a post-marxist feminist method, this thesis offers a plausible interpretation of this persisting division.
In the first part, the analysis of two current gender equality issues, of the financial support to family caregivers (chap. 1) and of the economic recognition of the work done by mothers and housewives (chap. 2), leads me to the following preliminary conclusion: in spite of their goals, these political measures actually contribute to maintain the status quo, indeed, to further confine women to their traditional roles.
In a second part, I argue that these measures, as well as the feminist approaches which underlie and support them, are themselves derived from processes of domination. This argument comprises four parts. First, I discuss the political theories of care. In shifting the debate from en ethic to a politic of care, these philosophers both wanted to illustrate the dimension of caring as an activity and to dissociate care from gender. I suggest that in spite of their goals, they still tend to stick to the differentialist logic which strengthens the links between woman and care when they put forward policies on gender equality (chap. 3). This logic of difference is actually closely linked to their notion of gender. Indeed, in distinguishing the socially constructed gender from the biological sex, their constructionist approach has the effect of confirming natural sexual differences (chap. 4). Man still being the norm and woman the «difference» under this view, women come to internalize the idea of a difference located in their own bodies (chap. 5). Finally, I bring to attention the very limited conception of care of these theorists, defined as care for the most vulnerable (infants, the sick, the old and the handicapped persons). This reductive conception actually contributes to invisibilize the largest part of the work done daily by women in support of those whose dependency doesn’t come under the most «extreme» form: the care of independents, that is, all the services (domestic, caring, reproductive and sexual services) devalued by their recipients while they constitute the condition for their «independence». As caring for «independents» remains invisible, women are ascribed to traditional roles and the most «powerful» are free to keep on dominating both institutions and the knowledge produced about it. Making this «invisibilized» part of caring visible, and replacing our common vulnerability at the heart of the political reflection on justice, are the first steps towards a radical democratic society, that is, a society freed from gender domination.